


tell me what you see

by huphilpuffs



Series: pff bingo 2018 [2]
Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Coming Out, Glass Closet, Introspection, M/M, gamingmas
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-23
Updated: 2018-10-23
Packaged: 2019-08-06 04:32:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 824
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16381463
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/huphilpuffs/pseuds/huphilpuffs
Summary: Gamingmas is done. Dan isn't sure what to do next.





	tell me what you see

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Phandom Fic Fests bingo fest, for the prompt: glass closet.

“What are we doing?”

Phil looks up from his computer. “Huh?”

“This year,” says Dan, “now that we don’t have a tour and we did– did all of  _ that _ . Where do we go from here?”

“Oh,” says Phil, like they don’t have a conversation like this every year. 

Like there’s not always a moment when a project ends and Dan’s mind runs in dangerous circles trying to find what to do next. 

Gamingmas is over. Christmas has passed, left them with snow on the ground and decorations still littered across the flat. Dan’s sitting on the sofa with a blanket drawn up to his chin, the gaming channel open on his laptop. 

They finished a whole tour last year. But right now, this somehow feels more consequential.

“What do you want to do?” asks Phil.

Dan shrugs.

Phil shifts. He’s set his laptop, lit up with the mindless scroll of social media, aside. “Does anything need to change?”

He shrugs again, staring at the grid of thumbnails they made. He can remember little moments from every video, little things he might have edited out if they hadn’t needed to post the next day, if they hadn’t been so high on creation, on success, on a year gone so impossibly well.

A lot of things went as planned. Gamingmas, Dan thinks, went as planned.

Almost.

It feels like they do this every time, plan two steps forward before tripping over themselves and stumbling over a third. This time, there’s twenty-five new videos on the gaming channel and a few weeks left of their holidays, and looking back at it, Dan can see their boundaries breaking.

They’d spent years building them up, crafting walls of heavy brick between them and their audience. They’ve spent years slowly chipping away at them.

Dan thinks it should probably be more terrifying, feeling like he just watched most of them topple.

“I think so,” he says. “I think–”

Phil presses closer, so his knee is nudging Dan’s thigh. “Yeah?”

He’s pretty sure Phil already knows. Phil’s usually more aware of these things. He thinks more about what he says, what he means to say, before he speaks than Dan does. 

But Phil’s good at helping Dan unscramble all the things he didn’t think about, even if it’s a moment too late.

“I think we changed,” he says. “We’re changing.”

Phil smiles. “We are.”

“We’re more open,” says Dan. Because they are. It’s written across everything they’ve done, laced in everything he thinks they could do. “And it’s–”

“Scary?”

“Yeah.” He sucks in a breath, slow and uncertain. “And happy?”

Phil reaches out, resting a hand on Dan’s thigh. “Yeah.”

They sit there for a moment, quiet. Dan’s heartbeat feels unsteady, he realizes. His breaths are too quick and his hands are shaking just a little over the keyboard. His whole world, he thinks, feels unsteady.

There was a time when none of this seemed possible, a time when Phil’s name felt bitter on his tongue when he thought other people might hear him, might see him. When he never could have imagined sitting back and letting himself breathe, letting himself be.

But there was also a time when a joint channel seemed impossible. And a book and a tour and anything like gamingmas and–

“Fuck.”

Maybe he is a little bit terrified.

Phil squeezes his leg. “You don’t need to figure it out now, you know,” he says. “Just because it’s a new year doesn’t mean it needs to be a whole new you.”

“I know,” says Dan. 

He tries to know, at least.

“We can just keep being us, seeing what makes us comfortable.” He moves even closer, reaching up to rest his hand over one of Dan’s. “People are going to find out eventually.”

The words shudder through his whole body, rush from his mind all the way down to his toes.

They’re not new. Phil’s said them before.  _ Dan’s  _ said them before.

But eventually used to be distant, used to exist only in their minds when cameras were off and they’d let themselves think of where people like them usually ended up. About where they wanted to end up. About where they weren’t even certain they would end up.

And now they’re talking about moving, about getting a dog, about all those grown up things that they used to think about, things that people would notice.

Eventually.

It feels like it’s not meant to be now.

Like it shouldn’t feel like it’s meant to be now.

Dan feels, he realizes, like it could be now, and everything would be fine.

“Are you okay with that?” he asks. 

Phil shrugs. His eyes have gone a little wide. “I don’t know,” he says. “Feels weird.”

Dan laughs. “I know.”

His hands fall, one onto the keyboard, pressing random letters into the search bar and the other into Phil’s so their hands are clasped.

Phil feels a little unsteady, too.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading. Come say hi on tumblr [@huphilpuffs](huphilpuffs.tumblr.com)!


End file.
